The Christian sources in alphabet writing provide extremely valuable information about the phonology at the end of the LMJ period, including a number of features of pronunciation which were not reflected in writing in Japanese script. In addition to the system as it may be inferred from the transcription in the texts and dictionaries, the grammars (Rodrigues's Arte and Arte breve and Collado's Ars grammaticae) have notes on pronunciation. Table 11.1 shows the sound inventory at the end of the period and includes also the transcription used in Vocabulario (the transcriptions used in the various Christian sources differ on points of detail, but they reflect the same phonological system). Unless otherwise noted, LMJ forms cited in this section are from the Christian sources, mostly Vocabulario, in the transcription used therein followed by a phonemic transcription if that is significantly different, e.g. chôzzu /tyoodu/ ‘washing’.

Table 11.1 shows both free moras (/CV, CyV, CwV/) and long syllables with a long vowel, which in the Christian sources were noted by a single vowel with a diacritic (/CVV, CyVV, CwVV/); see (11.5) about the phonemic analysis of long vowels. Table 11.1 does not include long syllables whose second mora was a consonant or a high front vowel (which formed a long diphthong with the preceding nuclear vowel), as these were noted by individual segments in the Christian sources.